The Ties That Bond
by MoonDrop162
Summary: Khan wasn't the only one woken up on the S.S Botany Bay when Marcus found the Augments adrift in space. It will not be an easy feat for his daughter to help him save their people from the clutches of Starfleet, but Emrys knows she has what it takes. After all, superior ability breeds superior ambition. Rated T for mild lang, but subject to change later.
1. Prologue

Welp, yet another plot bunny that I had to write. I can't tell you where this one is going guys (this would spoil the whole story and everything!), but I can tell you that it is gonna be good and about 75% my own ideas. The general plot follow Into Darkness, but most of the actual writing and things that happen are my own.

As with any of my fanfics, I hope you guys love it! Tell me what you think in a review. They let me know if I'm heading the right direction or not.

And hey! I actually proofread this one and did some editing. Isn't that insane!?

Kisses!

MD

_Disclaimer: I do not own Stark Trek or any part of the franchise. I gain nothing from writing this other than creative satisfaction._

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**PROLOGUE**

**The first thing she could ever remember was the emptiness of a medical room. The chill of the mechanically controlled air. The absolute silence only broken with the sound of her own breath and heart beating strong and sure in her chest. The tang of an industrial-grade disinfectant. The mask for these chemicals with artificial citrus. **

**It was… disorienting.**

**One moment her mind was dormant with a heavy sleep, and the next instant awareness closely followed by the onslaught of sensory overload. Confused and frightened, she warily opened her eyes.**

**The walls were bare and white. Clean. Sterile. She could see minute crack in the paint from across the room, microscopic and almost lost in the slight texture left behind from the paintbrush. She hated them instantly. The cool, metal table she was lying on glistened in the fluorescent lights that made her sensitive eyes flutter in pain. There was a door in the corner off to her left, and one on the wall above her head. She was, she quickly realized, naked. A quick cursory glance over her skin told her she was uninjured. In fact, she was perfect. Not a single scar or cut on the ghastly pale skin. And she was small. Tiny, in fact. A child. Her heart beat quickened with her tension, loud as an alarm in the stillness of the room around her. There wasn't even a clock mounted on the wall. She was the only source of sound with all her breathing and shuffling. No indication of where she was, why she was here, or to what end. She didn't know why someone so young was being kept prisoner like this (because this room definitely felt like a prison), but she mentally shrugged with the knowledge that she would have to find out eventually, and she'd cross that bridge when she got to it.**

**Coming to this conclusion, she finally noticed the physical needs of her body she had been suppressing in her examination of her surroundings. Hunger for one, as well as a near-crippling thirst. But the most pressing was the need to relieve her bladder. Clenching her legs together uncomfortably as the full force of this hit her, she pushed herself to a sitting position and looked around frantically for a bucket or anything that she could use. There was, much to her dismay, nothing, making her growl in frustration. Her only hope was behind one of the two doors. The drop off the table was more difficult than originally anticipated, if only because her legs weren't used to her weight and buckled beneath her.**

**The door in the corner was a failure. She could only reach the handle from the tips of her toes, but it didn't matter because it was locked anyway. Wincing from the pain in her abdomen, she rushed over to the second door and sighed in relief when it opened to another clean room. There was some kind of chair in it made of porcelain on top of a bowl full of water, and a taller bowl with a metal spigot and two handles on either side. 'Toilet and sink' her mind supplied, though she couldn't recall having ever heard the words before. Their functions were simple to grasp and their size catered specifically toward someone with her height (or lack thereof), and much to her relief, she was able to take care of her business without further delay.**

**When she was finished washing her hands, she stood in front of the previously ignored mirror to find out what she looked like. Her face was still round with the fat of youth, and she seemed to be naturally pale, though under these appalling lights, she looked pasty. Her prominent cheekbones and button nose were painted with a litter of freckles. Her mouth was small but full. And her eyes. They glowed a bright, metallic silver, full of curiosity and a quiet strength. She could see the peeks of something lying in wait below the bland inspection and the sparkle of her irises. The color was even more shocking against her jet black hair, falling in light curls over her shoulders. Her lashes were long, and she had a cleft chin and defined brow. **

**She objectively concluded she was very beautiful for one so young and would only grow into this with age.**

**Blinking at her reflection once, she turned and left the bathroom, but froze when she noticed a man sitting calmly in her room in a chair that hadn't been there a few moments before. There was a small, rather short table next to him, and another empty chair. She looked over him warily, shocked that she could heart a soft **_**thumpthump**_**-**_**thumpthump**_** from across the room. It was, she surmised, his heartbeat.**

**If his white coat was anything to go by, he was a doctor of some sort. His hair was salt-and-pepper, slicked back by a comb and greasy hair product that smelled positively repugnant. Wire frame glasses perched on his tired face, only starting to show signs of age. His eyes were narrow and dark, angled slightly up, and his nose was flat. He wasn't thin, but neither were his clean-pressed clothes too tight. She wasn't sure because he was the first person she'd ever met and there was no data to prove she was a good judge of character, but… he did **_**feel**_** too threatening. And despite her own gradually slowing heartbeat warning her against engaging him and leaving the safety of the bathroom, she couldn't help the feeling of hope. Maybe this stranger could shed some light on who she was, why she was here, where here was, why she was missing the first few years of her life, and who were in those first few years.**

"**Sit," he commanded, startling her. She narrowed her eyes in suspicion when he gestured to the empty chair, because yes that had been a clear command, and she didn't much like the feelings that came with it. In fact, you might say that she rather hated being told what to do. It went against a near instinct, compulsion, whathaveyou, to **_**be**_** the one to give orders. Not take them.**

**From where she stood, she could see some folded cloth she assumed were clothes, but made no move toward them. The man frowned when she didn't walk closer and scribbled some notes on a clipboard before fixing her with a hard gaze.**

"**I have neither the patience nor time for dawdling, child. Now **_**sit**_**." She stiffened at the harsh tone, but conceded to him and made her way to the seat. It would be unwise to anger someone in a position of power over her, no matter how much she hated that position was there. A white t-shirt and sweat pants in her size sat waiting for her, and she slipped them on under the man's watchful gaze. He waited until she had climbed into her chair before he spoke again.**

"**You've been asleep for nearly four years, and yet you're moving around already, and even figured out the bathroom on your own. Impressive." She wasn't sure what she was supposed to say, so she opted to keep the silence. "You must be hungry." Her stomach growled loudly in agreement. She cocked her head at the strange tug she felt in her abdomen, the heavy emptiness and how it made her hands shake and her head dizzy. The man nodded, and made another note in his papers before standing. She tensed, watching every flex of his muscles, every shift in weight in case he would try something. However, he simply walked to the locked door and stepped out as easy as pie. He was gone for precisely 3 ½ minutes before he returned with a tray bearing a bowl of hot something, a glass of a bright yellow-ish liquid, and a bottle of water. He set it down on the table (the perfect size for her young frame) in front of her and resumed his seat.**

"**Your body has never eaten before, and as such is not acclimatized to food. For now, nutrient-enriched oatmeal is what you will have along with a small glass of juice until your stomach can handle richer foods. Eat and drink slowly, but have as much as you like," he informed her. She hesitated before nodding and clumsily reaching for a piece of metal with a flat, curved end. She assumed it was to help her eat as the food was too hot to handle with her bare hands. 'Spoon,' her mind supplied again. Her first attempt with the… spoon failed, making her and the man frown. Her second try was perfect, though she misjudged exactly how hot the food was and burnt her tongue. She used the brightly colored juice to cool the hurt, and her eyes widened at the explosion of flavor. The oatmeal was bland and flavorless, but the juice was sweet and tangy at the same time. Smooth and slightly frothy with bits of pulp stuck to her tongue and lips. The man chuckled at her look of wonder.**

"**You like the orange juice, then?" he asked. She blinked at him once and nodded. The man chuckled again as if expecting that answer and let her finish as much of her meal as she could. When he returned from disposing of the dishes, she felt lethargic from the tight but pleasant feeling in her stomach. She could tell by the set of the man's jaw that formalities were done with and they were coming to the heart of his visit with her. The reason why he was truly here. She tensed in preparation.**

"**My name is Doctor Noonien Singh," he started, his hands folded together in his lap, "and you are my latest creation." She stared blankly at him. What did he mean 'creation?'**

"**Yes, you were created. Using my very best crop, in fact. I have high hopes for you." She cocked her head at him, unsure of what to make from this. She could tell he expected some sort of emotional response from her, but truly she felt nothing on the matter. She was this man's creation, and by extension, his property. She had no parents, no one to worry about being lost in her forgotten memories (that she now realized never existed). She had been created for this man, and whatever purpose he deemed dire enough to artificially forge a life. The man watched her face, wrote, and clasped his hands again.**

"**Now that you are awake, your conditioning and schooling will start in three days. You'll be moved to your quarters later today, at which point you will also be shown around the facility. Do you understand everything I've told you so far?" She nodded.**

"**Good. Do you have any questions?" Yes. She had a million. Why was she made? What did he mean by conditioning? Were there others like her? What was her purpose in life? How old was she? Did she have a name? What did he mean crop? **_**Did**_** she in fact have parents that had agreed to something like this? What did he want from her right at this moment in time? What was the best way to keep him appeased so he continued to feed her and cloth her? She pursed her lips, all these thoughts flying around her mind while he waited patiently for a response of some kind. Finally, she settled on something simple, a good building block and the first answer crucial to the rest of her life.**

"**What's my name?" Her voice was soft and lilting, melodic. But strong. She could feel the contained power in her words, the command, and underlying tones that just screamed **_**Alpha**_**. Was that what she had seen buried in the mercury when she was looking over her own reflection? The man's eyebrows raised as if he were surprised by the question, but he looked down at the papers in front of her for the answer.**

"**Emrys," he said. "Your name is Emrys."**

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****Review! Review, review, review!

Please?

Peace.


	2. Gatekeeper

Hello darlings!

I must say, I quite enjoyed writing this chapter, and I am rather satisfied with how it turned out. Pretty sure I caught all the mistakes, but if you see any I missed, lemme know!

Kisses!

MD

_Disclaimer: I do not own Stark Trek or any part of the franchise. I gain nothing from writing this other than creative satisfaction._

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**CHAPTER 1: GATEKEEPER**

**The first lesson Emrys ever learned was that there was no love between Augments. That's what Dr. Singh told her she was. An Augment. There was companionship, and perhaps even camaraderie, but love was a foreign concept they couldn't wrap their minds around and understand. Love required empathy and compassion, things they weren't programmed to feel.**

**Except for Emrys.**

**Somehow, and it took many years to find out, she was different. That was obvious from the start. She was as cold and calculating as the rest of them. But she **_**felt**_** things no other Augment could ever hope. She dreamed, which was the first sign to her caretakers that something fired differently in her synapses. She dreamed of waking up in that white room, and then dreamed of the faces she'd seen when being given the tour of the facility later that day. Augments didn't **_**dream**_**. Augments didn't **_**feel**_**. **

**But Emrys did.**

**Her peers saw it as a sign of weakness, a chance to exert their superiority over the smaller and more fragile. But her emotions seemed to only give her strength. A temperance to the aggression and volatility the others displayed and the geneticists had been hoping to curb. She was their star child, their hope for a truly better world for humanity.**

**Needless to say none of the others wanting to prove their dominance succeeded.**

**Life continued on in a routine for her, and she was content to let it be. She woke up, dressed, ate, went to school, went to physical training, ate, showered, finished homework and ended her day with an hour of free time before lights out. Her mind was perfect. She didn't know what they had done to her while she was a fetus, but some switch in her DNA had been flipped, and her mind was unlike anything seen in that day and age. Even the scientists didn't realize how quickly her mental capabilities would outgrow her physical body, and that was when she was hiding the true scope of her abilities from them.**

**Emrys could and often did break through their firewalls and snoop around their secret files. She knew that her generation was not the first batch, but the third. The first generation was nearly thirty years old, and the next, in the prime of their age around mid-twenties. Her own generation, full of toddlers with the strength to snap a man's neck, were the hopefuls. There were others like her, with subdued violent outbursts and impressive intelligence levels, but she (and this was read with no small amount of pride) was their number one. Different scientists had input their opinions on what made her different, but Dr. Singh's opinion is the one that caught her eye.**

"**Through numerous days of observations of Emrys' physical, mental, and emotional capabilities, I am left with the obvious conclusion that her astounding rate of success is credited toward the efforts of myself and Dr. Deknis in her embryonic cultivation and Augments Khan and Maryla in the successful copulation leading to her birth." Kahn. Marlya. Copulation? Emrys was nine years old, five years after the white room, when she learned that she was the first Augment to ever be born and not created in a test tube. Unsure what to make of this or how it would affect her in the days to come, she left the system, covering her tracks with another virus, and slept.**

**Over the coming weeks, a desire grew within Emrys. The homework was pathetically easy, so she wasted no brain power toward it and completed her assignments on autopilot. This need, she realized, was born out of a want to know her parents. There were no pretty lies told to the children. They had no parents, they were not born, they were **_**made**_**. They accepted this as the basis for their life and carried on with no love lost there. They had, however, lied to **_**her**_**. She had indeed been born. Kept as an infant in a near coma until the age of four for reasons not kept in the records, but Maryla had carried her to term and pushed Emrys out from between her own legs, that was the truth.**

**Emrys had no illusions about her parents. They had no interest in her other than that which was required to create her in the first place. If they did, they could have found her years ago. That did not, however, mean **_**she**_** was required to keep that peace. She wanted to see which parts of her personality came from which parents. See which one she looked like more. See if they had any kind of emotional connection to each other. See if they could have any kind of emotional connection with **_**her**_**. She didn't really know what she wanted, to be honest, because she wanted so much. It was hard to discern each individual wish and categorize it in a place all its own.**

**Emrys decided to take action next week. She had a test in school that she didn't need to study for, but had to pretend she did, and after that, the children were to be given a few days off of school and focus more earnestly on their physical training. It would be easy to slip away and roam to the section of the second gens. From Khan and Maryla's files they were both exceptional and treated almost as the unofficial leaders of that generation, so they wouldn't be hard to find.**

**What Emrys failed to take into account is how memorable her face was and just how hard it would be to go unnoticed by those trained to notice **_**everything**_**. She was stopped on numerous occasions only to be questioned about why she was there, who sent her, and why they'd sent someone so **_**small**_**. She had always been on the more quiet side for an Augment and kept this trend in the face of her superiors, refusing to bow to their demands. Eyes narrowed at her chin raised in defiance and they started to drag her along to Dr. Singh, the ranking scientist of this facility, but with a quick jab at certain pressure points, their arms and legs went limp and she continued on her merry way.**

**It was after one such occasion that finally found one of the two people she was looking for. Maryla was seated in a commons area, silently reading a book when Emrys turned the corner and stopped in her tracks. The woman… her **_**mother**_** was beautiful. She looked as fragile as a porcelain doll, her features just as delicate. Emrys watched her in fascination, her eyes cataloging the pale scars from training and accidents over the woman's bear arms and legs. Maryla's hair was dark, but not the black Emrys had. It was a rich, honey brown, and curled just like her daughter's. She had the same nose, and the same chin, eyelashes, and fingers. Maryla looked dainty, like a fairy.**

**Emrys gasped when her mother's emerald green eyes looked up from her page and widened in surprise at the child before her. Then the shock was gone, replaced by blank impassivity, and the woman gently closed the book and set it down on the empty chair next to her. The two said nothing to each other for some time, choosing instead to make a careful examination. Emrys' heart nearly thumped right out of her chest as she hoped that her mother would approve of what she saw.**

"**What are you doing here?" Maryla finally asked. Her voice was light, playful, but just sharp enough to hint at the danger she possessed. It was lacking the something **_**other**_** that her own voice had, though; that something **_**extra**_** that wasn't sharp, but commanding and powerful. Emrys cocked her head at the older woman, her bright eyes blinking, and said nothing. Maryla's lips pursed.**

"**Did Khan send you?" Emrys blinked once more and shook her head. "Then what are you doing here?"**

"**Looking for you," she replied, shrugging. Maryla startled at the **_**other**_** she could hear in her daughter's voice and narrowed her eyes in disdain.**

"**Well you found me, so what do you want?" Something cold and hard, sat heavy in her stomach filling her with a sense of longing emptiness. With a sigh she looked over her birth mother one last time and turned dismissively and left. Disappointment, she labeled the feeling. She was disappointed in who her birth mother was.**

**Emrys wandered the halls, lost in her thoughts. Did she even want to meet Kahn after something like that? The encounter had been quick and succinct. No hints of emotion, no positive response to seeing her. Maryla had looked at her like Emrys was a fly buzzing in her face. It was obvious she hadn't wanted the small child there. Khan would be no different. Why had she even bothered to do this in the first place? Somewhere in her mind, there should have been a train of rational thought that let her know her expectations would not be met, and she would leave only with the bitter taste of… disappointment.**

"**Ah, there you are." Emrys froze. The voice behind her was deep and accented. Engineered to speak to the animal instincts of every augment to shut up and pay attention because there was something more threatening that demanded your attention. It rolled like thunder over the skies in late summer, when the air was heavy with moisture and difficult to breathe. It made her stop in her tracks and her mercury eyes widen in surprise. Stupid of her, so **_**stupid**_** to let her guard down like this. She should know better than to be so vulnerable when surrounded by so many Augments, especially when they were older and she'd been notoriously pissing them off for the past few hours.**

"**You, little girl, have been causing quite the stir around here today," he continued. He had a light but defined British accent. Strange, she thought, seeing as they were somewhere in Asia. She could hear the slow beat of his heart, calm and steady, and her own, light and rushed with her shaken nerves only moments before. **

"**Turn around and look at me," he commanded. She paused, wanting to do everything she could to fight it, but in the end she submitted like any other. Slowly, so as not to cause alarm, she turned around to a pair of shining black boots, and trailed her eyes up the man's body until she was staring into a pair of glacial blue eyes. He blinked at the silver color of her eyes, but otherwise his face remained neutral. Emrys stared up at him, refusing to drop her gaze first. Khan frowned at her defiance.**

**They shared his high cheekbones, and his brow, and the deep set eyes, though their color was different. Equally piercing in their own rights, but that was where their similarities ended. His hair was the right shade of black, she noted, though slicked back smoothly. He was pale. Another thing she'd inherited, though where the freckles came from, she had no idea. The most obvious thing about his, though, was how tall he was. He towered over her. Emrys had always been more of a runt, but that being said, she didn't even reach his hips.**

"**You are my offspring," he stated. She nodded slowly.**

"**Tell me why you have traipsed around my section inconveniencing my people," he said softly. She shuffled her feet and hid a smile. He sounded less than pleased. Was he upset that a nine-almost-ten year old was able to best some of his men and slip away? And that she didn't do it only once, but six times? Khan narrowed his eyes dangerously at her.**

"**Unlike you, I do not find silence amusing, child. Now answer me." She sighed softly.**

"**I came here looking for you. And Maryla****." She shrugged, looking away from his face and at his perfect boots instead. "I only stopped the people that tried to make me leave, but I didn't hurt them. Just made them let me go." Khan considered her words for a moment before kneeling down in front of her. She continued to inspect his boots, watching his movements carefully out of the corner of her eye.**

"**How did you incapacitate six grown Augments?" Emrys leveled him with a flat look.**

"**Well, I am **_**your**_** daughter." His lips twitched at the sassy response, and she couldn't tell whether he was amused at her audacity or offended at her lack of respect.**

"**Why did you come looking for us?"**

"**I'm not sure, honestly," she muttered. "There was just something in me that needed to do this. I was just about to leave, though."**

"**Before I even had a chance to learn your name? That's not very polite." She looked up at him in surprise. She couldn't be sure because he was as deadpan as before, but that almost sounded like he was making a joke. He waited expectantly and she realized that had been his way of actually asking **_**for**_** her name.**

"**Emrys," she whispered. She hated her name. It was so harsh and masculine for such a feminine face. Khan looked at her displeased face in silence for a moment before reaching out and gently cupping her chin in his hands. His fingers were cold as ice.**

"**That won't do. Your face is much too pretty for such a name. How about… Emma?" She gaped at him, caught off-guard by the thoughtfulness of his suggestion. His fingers tightened painfully on her chin, reminding her that she had yet to answer him. Again.**

"**Y-yes," she stammered, "thank you, Khan." He looked in her eyes once more before nodding and standing up. He reached down and instinctively, Emrys… Emma reached up and wrapped her smaller hand around two of his fingers. Without another word between them, Khan led her through the compound and out into the sunlight where Dr. Singh stood tapping his foot and glaring down at her. She tightened her grip on her father's fingers and knew there would be no more hiding from the good doctor, but she didn't mind. Sparkling silver looked up into winter's blue. There was no compassion, no love, no emotional attachment buried in there like she had hoped, but there was something. Intrigue, perhaps? Fascination, certainly.**

**And that… well… who could ask for more from an Augment?**

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She knew something was wrong the moment she was aware that she'd woken up alone. Someone, preferably Lance, was supposed to be there during the awakening from a cryosleep. They were meant to help the crew get back on their feet – literally. Cryostasis was not something to be taken lightly, and is harsh on the body in the best of cases. With how rushed they'd been to leave the planet, this was not the best of cases.

Granted, she'd woken by herself alone before, but those were explained by the ship floating through some sort of trouble. As per her programming, her isolated tube was defrosted, she was woken, and did the best she could getting them out of danger before she fell back into her cold slumber in the hopes that next time her eyes opened, it would be in the atmosphere of a planet. Those emergencies had been obvious because there were red lights flashing and alarms going off on the other side of the glass tubing. But since this was not the case and no one was inputting the code to slowly heat her up and open her up, that left only one possibility. Someone in the crew had woken prematurely. On top of the emergency situation protocol to wake her when the ship was in danger, she'd hardwired her tube right into the ship itself to boost her power so she could run the program needed to hack into the life support systems of every 84 individual tube and wake her as well if something were to pull one of them out of their sleep too early. The S.S. _Botany Bay_ was set to bring the Augments out of their sleep when they settled into a geodesic orbit around a habitable planet. They weren't meant to waken all at once, but more in groups based on rank. There should be _people_ around her.

But she was alone.

'_Something is wrong.'_

Carefully, Emma wiped away the condensation from the glass in front of her face. Her view of the ship was limited, but she was able to see the coast was clear of danger. Slowly, her hands shaking from the near freezing temperatures that had yet to fully dissipate, she pressed a button by her hip she'd installed that popped her tube open. She lay there silently, listening to the soft hum of the engines and the gentle rush of air from the ventilation systems, allowing her body the time to gather strength. Her tube had been set apart from the rest of the crew. The 83 others were collected in the cargo bay; it was the only area big enough to hold the amount of bulky tubes, but Emma had taken hers and hidden it deep within the ship. The captain's quarters to be specific. From there she'd removed a section of paneling and gutted her own tube to wire the two together. The room was dark, only the emergency bulbs glowing with just enough light to ensure that Emma wouldn't hit anything while she moved around. Which would not be easy if she'd had the time to do this slowly(she didn't). Waking from a cryosleep, she had discovered the first time, was no walk in the park.

After approximately four minutes, she deemed her arms stable enough to push her to a sitting position and help her tumble out of her tube ungracefully as she fell to the floor with a quiet 'oof.' Her limbs stung with the pins and needles as blood flow slowly warmed the chill from her body. She blinked her silver eyes, dazed, while she waited for the rest of her body to catch up with her mind. She didn't really have the time to dawdle, because someone of her family was awake right now under unknown circumstances, and she needed to help them, make sure they were safe. However, forcing her body to move before it was capable would only be counterproductive, and so she had no other choice but to lie still and wait once more.

She was alone.

Eventually, she was able to move her body with only slight trembles. Her limbs felt shaky and weak from the hunger gnawing away in her stomach, and her tongue was grating around in her mouth like sand, but she had to push those to the back burner. For the time being, anyway. Huffing in annoyance at her own weakness, she staggered her way to her feet and fumbled across the room (bumping her toes and swearing under her breath) to the computer in the wall. She pressed a button to turn on the system and a keyboard emerged from the wall. Entering her override, she brought up the security cameras for the cargo hold and froze.

Men in clothes she'd never seen before were swarming the rows between her sleeping crew, their faces despondent and impassive. Soldiers, she surmised. Emma had plenty of experience around battle; she knew the way war carried a person through their walk. It was one of the first things she'd noticed about her father, but that was neither here nor there.

Speaking of her father…

Emma zoomed in on where the majority of the men were gathered and her face darkened. They were in the process of entering the codes to slowly wake someone from a cryosleep, as was meant to happen. Not the instant awareness she'd been forced to these past four times. They were, it seemed, going to wake up her father. For what purpose, she couldn't say, but seeing as he was the strongest of them and nearly the smartest (not the best in that category; Emma took the cake there, thanks to a certain doctor), there were any number of reasons why someone would want him. He was also the most ruthless and vicious of any Augment ever created, which said a lot as Augments as a whole were more aggressive and primal. Still, there was something in Khan's programming that just gave him a special _other_ that put even the most Alpha Augment on edge. He was their leader, and rightfully so. It was what he'd been made to be, after all.

Emma's pools of silver tracked every movement through the grainy screen as they opened up the tube and pulled Khan's limp body from within the confines of cryosleep. She squinted and tried to zoom closer to see if he was awake, but the quality of the picture deteriorated the closer she got, and she couldn't make out his face. Seeing as the men were still alive, however, she guessed he was still asleep. If they'd done the process correctly, Khan would be asleep for the next hour. If they botched it, then he wouldn't wake up at all. Her mind reeled. What was she going to do? There were so many people still asleep, and she couldn't just leave them there, they weren't safe, there were so many people walking around the tubes of her family, but that was Khan, that was her _father_ and if she didn't do something right now then…

Emma took a deep breath, calming the buzz in her ears. It wouldn't do to panic. There was no place for panic or her distracting emotions rights now. She'd always been the most emotional of the Augments and harassed relentlessly for what her people viewed as shortcomings, and normally she was able to let the harsh jibes slide over her skin like water. But there were times like now, when it was vital for her to detach from everything that it was the hardest, and she couldn't help but start to believe in the jokes made at her expense. Shaking her head forcefully, she input a command to the computer and checked on the vitals of the rest of the crew. They were all stable and hadn't been touched. Her own and Khan's were nonexistent what with their cryotubes offline, and she quickly wiped any record of her tube and its location from the system in case the intruders got too curious. When that was finished, she searched through the ship's schematics to find the quickest route to sneak to the cargo hold and get her hands dirty, so to speak.

Making quick work of the wires attached to her tube, she easily shoved the metal case in the closet and locked the door and frayed the wires to look more like time than intentional damage had been done. She pulled the hair tie off her wrist, pulling her buoyant curls back in a loose bun so they were out of her face, and left. Emma stalked the halls on silent feet slipping past the medical bay, the mess hall, and the crew's quarters until she was facing a dead end wall on the wrong side of the cargo hold. She'd gone to sleep with a small set of hand tools in her pants pocket and used these to pull the paneling away from the wall. Quiet as she could, she slipped inside the ventilation shaft and pulled the panel back into place behind her. It was a three feet crawl to her left and then a meter crawl after a right turn and she would be at a vent grating as close to her father's tube as she could get.

Every bump and scrape in the metal shaft grated on Emma's already frayed nerves, and she cursed herself for being so clumsy. Thankfully, there were no men with guns waiting at the vent opening when she snuck up to it, and she looked as a group of soldiers in simple red cloth and black slacks walked around. There were almost as many crew members with blue shirts, and a couple with gold, but mostly red. However, her eyes instantly sought out the man she could tell was the leader. It was obvious by the way every posture stiffened in his presence. They were standing at attention for this man, in the ready position for orders. His clothes were gray clacks and a thick blazer buttoned up to the neck of gray and white with gold marks on his shoulder to denote rank. His hair was a dark gray, and his skin very pink, soft, and disgustingly _human_. Emma knew that if she were to leap from her hiding place and attack this man, it wouldn't even take all of her strength to snap the bones in his neck. She couldn't guarantee what they would do to her father, however, so she waited, biding her time.

"I want him on the shuttle and ready for transport in five minutes," the ranking officer said harshly, glaring at Khan's lithe body. His voice had the slightest hint of a southern American accent. Emma resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Figures the _Americans_ would be the ones heading this fiasco. "Keep him in an induced coma until we reach warp."

"Aye, sir!" the men around his answered, scurrying off to carry out his orders. Emma narrowed her eyes. Smart to kidnap their leader. He was the leader for a reason. Khan was the cream of the crop. Whatever this military man had in mind, he was one of the best choices to reach that goal quickly and efficiently.

If he could garner Khan's loyalty, that is. Which he wouldn't. Khan was loyal only to those like him; his people. Any that were not Augments didn't even register as more than an annoying blip on his radar. The only way Khan would ever listen is under duress, and nothing would have a strong enough hold on him than family. His crew. Whether that's where this stranger in gray and white was going to head first when Khan woke up, or if that ended up as the only option left, all roads led to Khan waking up to find his crew being held hostage and a prisoner of whatever this man wanted of him. Emma seethed as her mind reached this conclusion of thought, enraged at the cruel play from this man. She watched him keenly as he looked around the cargo bay at the other 82 undisturbed tubes.

"Admiral Marcus!" a blue shirt called out. The stranger (now named Marcus – and an Admiral, was he?) watched as the young blue shirt came running up, holding a flat device in his hands that Emma was unable to see clearly.

"We've run a schematic of the remaining Augments and determined how many survived isolation," blue shirt announced. Emma froze. Survived? Some of her crew perished? But… but how? The last time she'd been awake she'd checked all 83 tubes, and everyone's vitals were as strong as one could hope from genetically engineered perfection. Her face fell with the knowledge that some of her companions were lost and would never again open their eyes. Many had found joy in tormenting her, yes, but each of their minds were bright bulbs, glowing bright in the darkness of war and pain, and none of them deserved a death while frozen in time.

"And? How many do we have?" Blue Shirt looked down at the thing in his hands to verify his answer.

"73, including Khan's." Emma bit back a gasp. 84 Augments total had boarded this ship, including Khan and herself. 74 survived? Only 74? Ten of her crew, her family, had perished. Her eyes stung with unshed tears, and Emma blinked harshly to push them away. Now was _not_ the time for such trivial emotions. Now was the time for intellect and planning. Now was the time for an Augment.

"More than I expected," Marcus muttered. "Alright, Deacon. I want you and a small crew to remain with this ship until we have a retrieval team meet up with you and help you back to Earth." Deacon opened his mouth as if to protest but stopped at the look on the Admiral's face. He nodded stiffly.

"Yes, sir."

"This ship doesn't have the strength to make that journey on its own. I want you to monitor the others and make sure we don't lose anymore, understand?" Deacon straightened his back and met Marcus' eyes.

"Understood, Admiral." Marcus nodded approvingly and turned sharply on his heel to head toward a shuttle that Emma had failed to notice. It was a few meters away, toward the opening of the cargo bay airlock. Deacon watched his ranking officer before shaking his head and cursing softly, jabbing at the thing in his hands and stalking off. Taking a deep breath and one last cursory glance around the immediate area, and used her screwdriver to open the grating and caught it before it fell to the floor. She slipped out of the ventilation shaft and replace the grating. Ducking between cryotubes, she weaved her way closer to the shuttle. She wasn't entirely sure how, but Emma knew she needed to get on that ship. It pained her to have to leave the crew behind and unprotected, but whatever Marcus was waking Khan for was going to be tough, and he would need all the support he could get.

* * *

Give me a review, loves! Please, please, please! I beg of you! Please and thank you!

Peace.


	3. Veritas

Hello, lovelies!

Not too pleased with how this chapter turned out. I might come back and fix it later, but I just wanted to get it up and posted. Things are going to start picking up soon, I promise.

Please leave me a review! I need to know how I'm doing so far. What do you guys think of Emma? What kind of character do you think she's going to be like?

Kisses!

MD

_Diclaimer: I do not own Star Trek or any part of the franchise. I gain nothing from writing this other than creative satisfaction._

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**CHAPTER 2: VERITAS**

For all the technological advances made during their self-imposed 300 year exile, Emma could see how they could come to be. Starships, communicators, transbeaming pads, phasers… they all made sense. It followed the natural progression of things. It was the only logical outcome. All scientific discoveries made _sense_ to her. What she didn't understand was why her alarm clock had to bock at her like a chicken. Loudly. And incessantly.

With a groan, she pushed her blankets down and glared up at the ceiling with controlled wrath.

"Computer, silence alarm." Instantly, the ever-growing desperate cries of a chicken vanished, leaving Emma wrapped in comfortable silence. She ran a hand over her face. It had been another long night of playing catch-up with the rest of the world. At least she was up to date on Earth's history and the birth of the Federation and Starfleet, albeit at the expense of personal sleep. Normally this wouldn't bother Emma. As an Augment, she didn't need eight hours of sleep a night to function at optimum capacity. She could go days without sleep (whether she _should_ was relative), and only needed four hours to feel well rested. She'd only been able to grab an hour last night.

The urge to burrow under the covers was tempting, but unfortunately, it was not an option. Her identity was finally ready to be put to the test. The five days since she'd landed on Earth as a stowaway in Marcus' ship had been a whirlwind of a million things all needing Emma's immediate attention. It had been a challenge to juggle, even for her. Needing to make a whole life out of thin air while she found a place to sleep, a job, and a read up on what she'd missed floating around in space, and she hadn't been sleeping much at all lately. All of it led to this day where she would finally see the fruits of her labor. Emrys Noonien Singh would need to be put on hold for some time while Emma Leigh Noon, a promising Starfleet Lieutenant took the stage.

It had taken no small amount of elegance when creating her life story. There had to be enough truth that it caught Marcus' eye, but not so much that he would be suspicious. Thankfully for Emma, Starfleet seemed to be _full_ of promising people, so it wouldn't be too unbelievable that she was suddenly on the roster of Section 31 personnel.

Emma Noon was a bright, chipper engineer (false) of 19 (true); smart (duh), and creative (yup), but lacking ambition (lie). She wasn't looking to make a name for herself (eh… probably not the best time for that), she just wanted to find a ship and happily serve her time by the warp core. Despite her intelligence, Emma had no drive to live to her potential, though when her superiors pushed at her, she always came through. She had no mother (true. Maryla died in the war), her father was missing (sort of true), and no siblings to speak of (that was complicated, but technically true). Her credit history was good, which seemed almost commonplace these days with how well others safeguarded their money. Her IQ was a 193 (false, it was much higher than that) and she could be a part of MENSA if she wanted, but her life was otherwise rather nondescript. She'd grown up in the small town of Needles, California, and double focus in engineering and astrophysics with a minor in tactical advantages. All in all, Emma was satisfied with her falsifications, but whether her forged identity would hold up against the Federation's rather formidable computers remained to be seen.

Last night while reading up on the final decade, Emma had sent a virus to the British Census Records and Section 31 mainframes with her profile compressed in a zip file. When the technicians touched the bug to take care of the problem, the file was set to unzip, making the systems glitch and embedding her profile in their rosters simultaneously. The only thing left to do was test out its strength.

With this goal in mind, Emma threw off the blankets, her seedy bedroom washed in the gray light of early morning. She stretched her arms above her head, pulling knots loose in her stiff neck and set about getting ready for the day. A quick shower later, and she pulled on her stolen red Starfleet uniform dress (no easy feat, mind you). She braided her black curls on either side of her face in small, tight French braids and pulled them back into a half ponytail. A little bit of mousse, and her normally wild curls had some depth and volume that exaggerated her femininity. A pair of brown contact lenses and an application of mascara later, and she was ready to go.

Emma Leigh Noon, newly graduated from Starfleet and accepted into the Section 31 program, reporting for duty.

* * *

"Name?" Emma refrained from biting her lip and smiled at the bored Starfleet security officer in his formal gray and red support staff uniform.

"Emma Leigh Noon," she chirped. He pressed a button.

"Designation Number?" Shit. She froze as she rushed through her eidetic memory, scrambling to remember what number the computer had generated for her. The man looked up from his screen when the silence stretched on too long. She quelled the feeling of panic with a deep breath, trying to relax her brain. Forcing the answer would only make it harder to remember. She just needed to open her mouth and the answer would be there. Lord knows she'd repeated it enough time.

"543-629-473 BC." The man checked his screen and nodded, motioning listlessly to what looked similar to a metal detector.

"Please step forward and remain still while the computer runs a scan," he instructed, gesturing to a blue screen with the vague outline of a hand. "Place your palm here while we copy your prints and program your biometrics to your access levels." Emma rested her left hand on the pad compliantly and both the screen and the pseudo metal detector sprang to life. The pad glowed with a soft blue light while the other scanner overlaid a grid of blue infrared lights over Emma's skull and shoulders, supposedly to do a check on her dental records or some such thing.

She felt like she was going to explode she was so nervous. Every second that passed was another second she became more convinced that there was a hole in her fabrications somewhere, and it would be in just the right spot to bring to light who she really was. There were so many things – last minute changes – her mind flung at her, convincing her they had been life or death decisions she'd overlooked. She couldn't breathe, she was so nervous. What was she going to do if this failed? She couldn't _afford_ for it to fail. Khan needed her.

'_Maybe I should have tested my identity before coming here…'_ she fretted. But, no. She'd already wasted five days doing all this work to insert herself into modern society without a hitch. Khan was somewhere below the waxed marble under her black leather booths at the Kelvin Memorial Archive. _He_ didn't have any more time she could waste dawdling around insecurely. Besides. She was an Augment. She was the best of humanity. Superior in every way. There was nothing that could truly stop her from completing this mission, and that helped calm her nerves considerably.

It felt like an eternity before both the grid and her hand glowed under green lights, and Emma mentally pat herself on the back at her success. She was in. The guard beckoned her over and handed her a pad and stylus. She blinked at him, clueless and he sighed, pointing down to a line at the bottom.

"Need your signature, ma'am. It's a confidentiality agreement saying you won't go spreading what you see down there to any old bloke on the street." Emma nodded and signed, handing him back his pad. He exchanged it for a small plastic card with barely visible lines of magnetized coding. "Insert this in the slot above the buttons and press the one on the bottom and it will take you down to Geoff. He'll teach you the proper sequence in the elevator so you won't need to go through this every time. Understand?" Emma grinned and nodded emphatically.

"Got it." He rolled his eyes and turned away from her dismissively.

"Enjoy your stay," he snarked. She giggled and twirled around to the elevator, happy when the doors shut behind her and she had a moment of peace to herself. She took a deep breath in and let it out slowly, falling back against the wall with a chuckle of disbelief.

'_I did it,'_ she thought happily, _'I'm in!'_ Emma relished the feeling of victory for a moment more before using her plastic card and pressing the button that would take her down to the depths of Section 31. Marcus had hidden this little project well, and it had taken Emma two days of digging to find it. She would almost be impressed if she didn't hate the man so much for kidnapping her father and holding the rest of her crew as ransom against him. She'd been concerned to see that her father wasn't listed in the employees assigned here, but felt stupid when she'd realized that of course he wouldn't. Marcus would never use Khan's true identity. If someone found out what he was, there would be chaos, and it was apparent to Emma now that this Starfleet officer was orchestrating outside of the regulations of the Federation. Khan was hiding under an assumed alias that Emma sound found to be John Harrison, a Starfleet Commander.

Emma pulled herself out of her musings when the elevator came to a stop and the doors opened smoothly on oiled motors. She hid her smile away for later and schooled her face into that of curious wonder. When she saw the grand size of the warehouse, not all of it was faked. She let out a low whistle. She was much deeper under the earth than she'd expected. There was a buzz of activity around her, though the warehouse was still rather empty of whatever Marcus wanted from Khan. She judged the length of the warehouse to be nearly two football fields long, and there was a small building clear on the other side. There were some doors off to her right and left and a reception desk to her immediate right where a young man sat reading something off a pad, his eyes intense and focused. Assuming this man to be Geoff, she walked over and cleared her throat to announce her presence. The human man jumped and quickly shuffled his pad away, blushing and making Emma curious about the exact nature of what he'd been 'studying.'

"What? What is it?" he snapped anxiously. Emma's face fell in mock hurt.

"Oh," she stammered, "I… uh… I was told to come… see Geoff? I mean, I'm new, so I dunno where I'm going, really. But you were here, and it was so close to the elevators I figured that was you, but I can see I was wrong. I'm really terribly sorry to have disturbed you, I didn't mean any – "

"Whoa, whoa," the man said, cutting off her ramble. He flashed her an apologetic smile. "Calm down. I'm Geoff alright. I didn't mean any harm, miss. I was just startled, you see." She nodded.

"Yes, of course. I'm sorry." He shrugged.

"It is what it is. Now… lesse here…" Emma watched calmly as he shuffled things around behind his place at the desk, making a noise of success when he found the specific item he was searching for. He held up a pad to his face and turned it on, pushing a few buttons and reading over a message before looking over Emma's face and back to his pad.

"You're Emma, are you?" She nodded, smiling.

"That's me!"

"Alright. What's your PADD number? I need to send you the sequence code for the elevator and a schematic of the facility and the area where you'll be working." Emma blinked. PADD? Is that what they were called?

"Uh…" she shuffled her feet nervously, playing with the hem of her uniform, "I don't… I don't have one." Geoff widened his eyes in disbelief.

"You don't have one? Is that even possible these days? Whaddya mean you don't have one?"

'_Shit. Shit. Lie! Lie!'_

"Well, mine has been on the fritz for a while now, and I guess it just gave up on life because it won't do anything now. What with graduation and then the sudden orders to come here, I haven't had the time to go get a new one." Geoff cooed sympathetically and bounced up from his chair to walk around and stand in front of her. He seemed short, just under six feet tall. Were all human men like this these days, or was that just him?

"That's too bad," he said, "I'm sorry to hear that. You think you can remember the sequence if I just show it to you?" Emma nodded and followed him back into the elevator. Her pressed a short number of specific buttons then held the last one for 5.2 seconds and looked at her expectantly. She copied the code perfectly, and he smiled at her approvingly. They walked back to the desk where Geoff had her sign more papers and read over some conditions of being privy to Section 31 and all it would entail. She asked as nonchalantly as she could who her ranking officers were here and what exactly she was going to be doing here. She wanted to see how many people Marcus allowed privy to the knowledge of her father's real identity, and if she would have opportunities to have contact with him at all. Geoff informed her that her immediate ranking officer was Commander John Harrison, but he only dealt with the section chiefs, one of which she was not. She was in the engineering section and would be physically putting together Harrison's designs and take his directions through her section chief.

Geoff handed her a spare PADD with all the pertinent information on it and told her she could borrow that just while she was learning her way around the place. She thanked him with a smile and a wave and headed off toward the door to her left which would take her down a hall that led to the engineering department. Emma felt a bit out of her depth because she had been her time's equivalent at some point in her life, but that was 300 years ago, and reading all about the revised laws of physics, for all her brains, wouldn't be nearly as effective as years of study in a professional environment. She wasn't entirely sure how she was going to pull this off, but if Khan could design modern-day weapons (which was the most likely scenario right now) with the same handicaps as her and without even touching his projects no less, then she could damn well build it for him. And now she had a PADD, a computer she could carry with her, and the permission to keep it for the next few days. She'd already memorized the layout of the facility, but bumbled her way in circles so as not to rouse suspicion. She could do so much with the device in her hands.

Things were progressing even better than she'd dared to hope.

With her purposeful twists and turns, it took her fifteen minutes before she was at her station, five minutes after she had been expected. Emma placed her hand on the scanned by the door and the light glowed blue for a moment before it beeped and turned green. The doors hissed open and she stepped through silently, walking right into a wave of air heavy with testosterone. She groaned internally at the overwhelming number of men in the room, joking and laughing with one another. The thumping of their heartbeats vibrated in her ears, and her hands tightened reflexively around the PADD. She was going to have to get used to being around humans again, with their dull senses and slower reflexes. The heat from the hormone of the twelve male bodies made her breathe heavy and her body perspired, making her clammy. She could use that, though, and play it off as her being nervous.

Now what would Emma Noon do in this situation? With the quieting conversations and the number of faces turning to stare openly at her, she decided that the Starfleet Lieutenant would duck her head with a blush and try to scoot into a corner and hide. Which is precisely what she did. Conversation slowly picked back up when she shoved her back against a wall and picked at the corner of the PADD in her hands, but it was more subdued than before, and the smell of testosterone and pheromones was much stronger. Emma struggled not to gag.

"You keep looking like that, and they're bound to pounce," an amused woman spoke next to her, making Emma jump. She'd been so focused on the men in the room, she'd let the human female sneak up on her. She blinked up at the woman. Short blonde hair and blue eyes. She wore a blue dress uniform and had a very round, pretty face. Her eyes danced with silent laughter.

"Sorry," Emma mumbled. The woman chuckled.

"Don't be sorry for their behavior. They're the ones looking at you like you're a steak in front of a dying man." Emma nodded. She had to agree, that was much the feeling she'd been getting from the people in the room, and she had to admit, she'd never felt so objectified in her life, which was saying something since her whole conception had been for the sake of being an object to idle scientists playing God. The woman extended a small, but weathered hand and Emma looked at it curiously. There were signs of wear on her palms and fingers, small scars and nicks. The woman obviously like to do her own work and wasn't afraid to get her hands dirty. Admirable. Emma grasped the hand firmly and shook it.

"I'm Carol," the blonde introduced herself, "Carol Marcus." Emma's eyes got bigger. Marcus? As in… _Marcus?_

"Wait, so your dad is –"

"The force behind this place? Yeah." Emma stared at the woman in renewed interest. She'd overlooked Carol when reading up on Admiral Alexander Marcus. Oh this was good. This was _gold_.

"Well, Carol, it's a pleasure to meet you. My name is Emma." Carol flashed a pretty smile and the pair chatted contentedly while Emma set up security protocols on her PADD and learned her way around the electronic device in her hands. The speed and efficiency of the thing fascinated her, and Emma would have loved to spend hours goofing around and learning the limitations and capabilities the thing had. But as her luck would have it, when her fingers were really starting to fly over the screen, that was when her chief walked in, barking at the men to shut up and pay attention.

His name was Andre Tucker, and Emma was unimpressed. He used harsh words and a cruel demeanor to keep charge over the crowd. There was nothing about him that told her she needed to bow her head because it was simply the way of things. Nothing like how it was with her father (though she didn't cow as much as others would expect, and there was a healthy amount of tension between them because of it). A good leader wouldn't have to snap at his subordinates to call him by his title, because he wouldn't have _needed_ to earn that respect. His whole existence would have demanded it and left no room for argument. Andre Tucker was no leader, and she cringed inside to be stuck under this man's thumb. Still… that was not how Emma Noon would behave, and she was not Emrys Singh at the moment. She ducked her head nervously when Andre looked her way, and Carol straightened to compensate, jutting her chin out in a challenge. Bored nearly to tears with their little pow-wow, Emma started counting the numbers from the Fibonacci Sequence to keep her mind busy.

She got to the 234th place before Andre finished.

Emma and Carol were chatting his hushed tones on their way out the door with the rest of their crew when Andre caught her by the arm with a firm hand. She narrowed her eyes at the offending limb and smoothed her face when she looked up at the man. He had dark hair, dark skin, and darker eyes.

"You," he gruffed, "what's your name?" She hesitated only a moment.

"Emma, sir. Emma Noon." His eyes roamed over her body in an open display of what he thought and she wrenched her arm away from his grasp in disgust.

'_Pig,'_ she snarled.

"Will that be all, sir?" He stared her before huffing and stalking away.

"He's a real charmer, that one," Carol muttered. Emma nodded in agreement and the pair of them left to go and explore the facility more with talk of detonation processors and the benefits of fiberoptic wires against copper, and all the while Emma tried to ignore the sinking feeling in her stomach that told her something was very, very wrong.

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Review! Please! They keep me and my muse happy and keep me writing! Please, please, please?

Peace.


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